While not as disastrous as Ilvermorny (Lavaeudeen for life!) I’m not very keen on the HP canon of Mahoutokoro or, at least, not as a magical commuter school that somehow has the smallest student body of the eleven great wizarding school. The Hogwarts student body was fucking tiny, no way does the only Japanese magical school have less than that. I’d like to tweak it slightly–so that it just makes more sense–that Mahoutokoro is the only all-magical UNIVERSITY of Japan (though some of the other universities also have magical departments/classes available).

Actually, now that I’ve said that, I kind like the idea of magical education for younger magicians being the equivalent of an after school club or a cram school or a special class that only certain students take (advanced placement or art or foreign languages, etc). So the “main characters” that would be the Konoha Thirteen in DoS would still go to the same school as civilians/genin corps characters but they’d be in the magic club/class.

Which means that the different villages are different schools in different regions of Japan… which means this has the same set up of a sports shounen manga but instead of sports it’s magic?

Uhhhhhh… now I can’t unsee it.

I mean, a lot of sports manga practically give their characters magic powers ANYWAY, so we might as well just go straight there.

LET’S WIN NATIONALS, KONOHA~!

I don’t think I’d want to do Quidditch–only because it’s not very conducive to three person teams, and it originates from the UK anyway–so maybe it’s magical dueling? But that also doesn’t really go with three person teams… Or, alternatively, that’s pretty bloodthirsty for a sport for kids.

Maybe I’ll make up some new sport. Something like magical capture the flag so it’s not just straight up FIGHTING. (I mean, pro-bending in Avatar LoK WAS a thing, but not all that keen on it, either)

Anyway, so the point is… while magic is an important part of their lives (and maybe even THE MOST important part of their lives) they still live amongst non-magical people, unlike in HP.

I also don’t particularly like the whole wooden wands thing. Though I don’t particularly want all Japanese magicians to do wandless magic (it’d basically be ninjutsu and kind of defeats the purpose of transferring it into the HP verse). Maybe part of learning magic is finding/making your own conduit. Which sort of explains why Naruto starts off pretty bad (like all shounen sports protagonists) because for the longest time he just can’t find one that can withstand the sheer amount of power he has. Whereas the equivalent of Shikako’s burgeoning fuinjutsu mastery would be her NOT needing her conduit all the time. Sasuke, as with most Uchiha, has a very traditional mirror conduit–because Sharingan = Mirror Wheel Eye?

Though there are still things that carry over from HP. Like, while it’s not AS huge a deal as it is in Britain, blood purity is still an issue depending on which clan you’re from. The Nara twins are probably halfbloods–but only the worst of the elders really care–but so is Neji which is a HUGE problem for the Hyuuga (especially considering he’s originally more talented than Hinata who is pureblooded).

I mean, I sort of joke about the sports shounen manga thing, so I suppose I could go in the more serious direction of Japan having a real bad Dark Lord problem given Orochimaru, Itachi, Pein/Nagato, Obito/Madara, and Kaguya… (although, the Golden trio never had to fight a literal goddess so that’s pretty cool I guess… although, although, the Golden Trio would probably be pretty good at the three person magical sport I’ll have to make up)

Hm… I guess it depends. Am I just transposing the DoS plot into the HP world, or just the characters?